The Kalmyk Autonomous Oblast’ was created in 1920, and in 1992, it was granted the status of Republic of Kalmykiia within the Russian Federation. Its capital is Elista. The official languages in the republic are Kalmyk and Russian. Kalmyk is a Mongolic language.
This is a beginning guide to bibliographic tools for researchers of Kalmykiia. Though not a comprehensive overview, this guide outlines three primary ways researchers can access bibliographic information about Kalmyk publications:
(1) Through the Russian National Library’s Department of Literature in National Languages imprint catalog
(2) Through the National Library of the Republic of Kalmykiia online library catalog
(3) The letopis’ pechati and national bibliography of Kalmykiia
Additionally, this guide highlights other resources related to the history, culture, language, and publishing in Kalmykiia. Researchers may also want to consult the following online database for additional coverage: Elektronnyi katalog knig na iazykakh narodov RF i stran SNG from the Russian National Library. This guide also highlights online resources including the Kalmyk National Library webpage and the electronic library of the National Library of the Republic of Kalmykiia.
Source: The Great Soviet Encyclopedia (Volume 11, page 367); Ethnologue.
LIBRARY CATALOGS
Natsional’naia biblioteka imeni A.M. Amur-Sanana Respubliki Kalmykiia
The electronic catalog (elektronnyi katalog) has no information about its coverage, but is assumed to reflect the holdings at the National Library of the Republic of Kalmykiia. Users have the option of the basic, advanced and professional searches. Under the advanced option they can search by document type, author, title, serial, BBK, key word, ISSN, ISBN, collection and other search terms. Users can also organize the results by title, author and other identifiers.
The results give basic bibliographic information as well as information about the location and availability of specific holdings. Sample results are shown in the image below.
Katalog literatury na Kalmytskom yazyke [microform] Rossiĭskai︠a︡ nat︠s︡ionalʹnai︠a︡ biblioteka. Otdel literatury na nat︠s︡ionalʹnykh i︠a︡zykakh
New York: N. Ross, 1997. U of I Library Call Number: MFICHE 016.942 R736k. Location : International and Area Studies Library, Microfilm Room. OCLC Accession Number: 39970842.
The Russian National Library’s Department of Literature in National Languages [also known as the Department of National Literatures] of the Russian Federation, Commonwealth of Independent States, and the Baltic countries has reproduced holdings catalogs in microfiche format. The national languages imprints catalogs in microfiche format diffuse most of the difficulties associated with transliteration in the vernacular languages, spelling, forms of entry, and uncertainties with the entirety of the collection. Researchers can access the entire holdings for a specific language at the Russian National Library through the microfiche set; conveniently exporting selected titles via PDF scans. The following scans reflect some of the Kalmyk-language holdings available in microfiche format.
Letopis’ pechati and national bibliography in Kalmykiia
In 1968, the National Library of Kalmykiia began to fulfill role of Book Chamber for the republic. In 2002, a specialized Center for national bibliography was created to take on this responsibility. The Center for national bibliography creates an archive for local documents and publications, and it compiles national bibliographies and statistics of publications in Kalmykiia. The electronic catalog of the Center for national bibliography of Kalmykiia includes more than 60,000 bibliographic records for books, articles in journals and newspapers, and other materials. Bibliographic records for materials in Kalmyk are accessible in the electronic database of the Center for national bibliography. The Center’s collection includes more than 9,300 books, pamphlets and journals.
The Center publishes an annual letopis’ pechati for Kalmykiia; each quarter, it publishes a bulletin with new books; and it compiles and publishes a retrospective national bibliography. Through WorldCat, users can find issues of the letopis’ pechati in physical (OCLC accession number 33271286) and electronic form (OCLC accession number 610018130).
Newspapers
In 1971, 87 books and pamphlets (431,000 copies), nine magazines (23,000 copies annually) and 15 newspapers (71,791,000 copies annually) were published in Kalmykiia. The following is a list of Republic newspapers, including the date in which they began publication and the language of publication: Khal’mg unn (began in 1920) in Kalmyk; Sovetskaia Kalmykiia (began in 1920) in Russian; and Komsomolets Kalmykii (began in 1929) in Russian. Another periodical is Teegin gerl (1957) which is a literature and arts anthology published in Russian and Kalmyk. Users can consult Gazety SSSR 1917-1960: Bibliograficheskii spravochnik 5 for a list of newspapers published in Kalmykiia between 1917 and 1960.
ONLINE RESOURCES
Elektronnaia biblioteka
http://www.kalmnlib.ru/articles/elektronnaja-biblioteka
The electronic library of the National Library of the Republic of Kalmykiia contains 1,395 items in its historical and ethnographic collection of documents from the 18th to the 20th century. Unfortunately, at this time, U of I patrons do not have access to the full-text documents of the digitized holdings. However, U of I patrons can browse the holdings and their bibliographic information according to the following themes.
- Natural sciences
- Agriculture and forestry
- Health and medicine
- History
- Economy
- Policy
- Constitutional law
- Warfare
- Education
- Nature
- Math
- Geography
- History and social sciences
- Russian language
- Kalmyk language
- Literature
- Folklore
- Poetry
- Prose
- Fiction in Kalmyk
- References
- Art
- Religion
- Periodicals
The Academy of Sciences of Kalmykiia
The Kalmyk branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences is one of the major research institutions of the republic. On the institute’s website, users can find:
- Information about the different subdivisions of the institute and their research focus
- A database that allows users to search publications of researchers of the institute since the 1960s, and full-text access to recent publications
- Recent issues of the institute’s journal Oriental Studies (Vestnik KIGI RAN)
Language and keyboard
Kalmyk is a Mongolic language and also referred to as European Oirat, Kalmack, Kalmuck, Kalmuk, Kalmytskii Jazyk, Khalli, Oirat, Qalmaq, Volga Oirat, Western Mongolian and Kalmyk-Oirat. Until the seventeenth century, the Kalmyk written language was based on the Old Mongolic script and until 1924, on the Clear Script (Bichig, related to the Mongolic script). Between 1924 and 1930, the Latin script was officially adopted, and since 1938, the Kalmyk written language has been based on the Cyrillic script. In addition to the letters of the Russian alphabet, the Kalmyk alphabet includes the letters Ə ә, Һ һ, Җ җ, Ң ң, Ө ө, and Ү ү.
Users who are interested in using vernacular languages in their research, can download a Cyrillic extended keyboard that can be used for Kalmyk and many of the other languages of the Russian Federation.
Source: Ethnologue; Kalmytskaia pis’mennost’